There are still communists out there…somewhere…I guess it’s called Transnistria.

Thursday, 24 October 2013

So, Spurs had a successful trip to Transnistria today…er, Moldova…for their Europa League tie against Sheriff Tiraspol. I’ve literally had a dozen people ask me if the place Spurs played today is real. A dozen, so for the half dozen of you that read this blog, here’s a late night post about Transnistria…er, Moldova:

Lewis Holtby, our spritely German midfield, thought Tiraspol was actually in Northern Ireland. Turns out he was way off – like in about 1,500 miles way off. As you can see from the fancy map below, there is the whole continent of Europe inbetween.

Apparently Transnistria still considers commies to be cool. The national flag dons the hammer and sickle. You know, you’ve seen it when watching Mike Eruzione and the rest of our boys in Disney’s version of the Miracle on Ice. You saw that because we beat the commies. Consequently, we are also undefeated against the Transnistrian National Hockey Team…

…which leads to the third interesting fact – nobody cares who Transnistria is. It’s a breakaway republic in Moldova that has it’s own constitution, parliament, government, military, postal service, etc. Problem is, Moldova is recognized internationally and Transnistria is not…and why would anyone not want to recognize this beautiful land. Point being, Transnistria doesn’t technically exist.

When the occupy movement complained of big business running America, I would venture to guess many of them had not heard of Transnistria either. Why? One company pretty much runs the show there – Sheriff. It. Runs. Everything. That’s quite a literal statement, too. According to Wikipedia, “Sheriff owns a chain of petrol stations, a chain of supermarkets, a TV channel, a publishing house, a construction company, a Mercedes-Benz dealer, an advertising agency, a spirits factory, two bread factories, a mobile phone network, the football club FC Sheriff Tiraspol and its newly built Sheriff Stadium at an estimated cost of $200 million including a five-star hotel still under construction.” You can say it owns everything because, after all, there is nothing else there.

So, it’s not in Northern Ireland, it’s a country of commies run by a corporation, and it doesn’t really exist. But, UEFA counts the points earned there today in the Europa League. #winning